Globe and Mail story today about the Lipczynska lawsuit

Daily Bulletin

Donor Val O'Donovan, librarian Susan Saunders Bellingham and UW president David Johnston show off the relic in the library's rare books room.

Letter from the Plains of Abraham

And UW now possesses an original letter -- brown ink on creamy paper, almost translucent with age -- that tells the story of how Major-General James Wolfe captured the fortress of Quebec on September 13, 1759, at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham.

Wolfe died of his wounds on the battlefield, and the defender of the citadel, the Marquis de Montcalm, died the next day. On September 18, Rear-Admiral Charles Holmes, third in command under Wolfe, attended to paperwork, dictating a report for his superiors at the Admiralty.

This letter and a copy of it would make their perilous journeys to London aboard separate ships -- the extra copy providing assurance that at least one would survive the stormy seas of early winter. In fact, both ships arrived. One copy of Holmes's report was eventually archived at the British Library; the other vanished.

That second copy now reposes in the Dana Porter Library at UW, 241 years after the Quebec battle. It surfaced as part of the vast private collection of the Fermor-Hesketh family of Northamptonshire. Valentine O'Donovan, a Cambridge businessman and UW's chancellor, learned that the collection was to be auctioned by Sotheby's in London. Among the items in the catalogue was "a contemporary first-hand account of one of the most decisive battles in North American history", says O'Donovan, who is an avid collector of first editions. "I recognized it as an important part of our heritage."

Even before he sent the bid, for an amount he prefers not to disclose, "UW, and the fine collection here, came to mind," he says. "I planned to make it an anonymous gift to the university, but president David Johnston persuaded me that it would be a good thing to reveal that an engineer can have a love of the arts." Educated in Ireland as an engineer, O'Donovan is the founding president of Com Dev Ltd.

The gift is now the earliest piece of Canadiana in the UW library collection. "This gift shows chancellor O'Donovan's dedication and commitment to the university, and is a fine example to others" who are potential benefactors, says Johnston.

The university is home to a collection of papers and memoirs of historical significance valued in the millions of dollars, but, says Johnston, "of inestimably greater value to students and other researchers for whom these items, such as the Holmes letter, give a real sense of past events you won't find in a textbook."

In 1,669 words over seven pages, Holmes's letter relates how troops boarded the ships at midnight, travelling seven miles downriver in "the most profound Silence" to land, in strong currents, at the foot of the bluff. From there, 1,800 men, with their artillery and ammunition, including "17 Pieces of Battering Cannon, beside others of a smaller Callibre, Mortars, Shells, Shot, Powder, Plank &c" climbed the 175-foot (50-metre) cliffs to surprise a lax guard and the unprepared Montcalm. It was, Holmes wrote, (with the spelling and capitalization characteristic of his era) "The most hazardous & difficult Task I was ever engaged in."

UW history professor Geoff Hayes says he was "pleasantly surprised" to hear of the donation of this "extraordinary document -- an almost eye-witness account of the most pivotal event in Canadian history." Says Hayes: "Historians love to work in primary documents. They are as close to an event as we will ever get."

Science minister visits Jim Wilson, Ontario's minister of energy, science, and technology, will visit UW today "to announce a five-year program to fund science and technology awareness programs for young people, and to recognize the success of the university's Engineering Science Quest". His appearance is scheduled for 12:30 p.m. in the earth sciences museum, room 371 of the Biology I building. Later in the afternoon, Wilson will announce the latest winners of the Premier's Research Excellence Awards from UW and Wilfrid Laurier University. During the proceedings, a news release says, "he will also present a $50,000 cheque to the recipient of the Martin Walmsley Fellowship for Technological Entrepreneurship, which is the Ontario Centres of Excellence award to encourage the creation of new, technologically innovative business ventures." That appearance is scheduled for 1:30 p.m. in South Campus Hall.

CIHR funding opens (some) doors -- shortened from yesterday's Gazette

"I think it will open doors for funding in more crossover areas of health research," Frank said. Traditionally, the MRC would fund pure physiology research; under CIHR, researchers attempting to apply that research are eligible for funding.

"CIHR has a broader mandate, crossing over from basic to applied research and across fields," he says, envisioning innovative projects that combine physiology and engineering or social science research. "I see more scope for collaboration within and among universities," Frank adds, noting the criteria for funding "are good for us (applied health sciences). The kind of work that goes on in our faculty is moving basic research out the door."

But the director of UW's school of optometry, Graham Strong, does not share his confidence. "I haven't been aware of any such optimism in the vision research community," he says. On the contrary, with "vision a significant issue for an aging population, there's a shared concern across Canada that vision research may be marginalized without changes in the CIHR structure. It could fall from the radar screen of medical research funders."

The problem, he says, is that in the CIHR's current structure of institutes, "there is no logical home for vision research. As a research issue, it's buried within the existing institutes . . . without any reasonable prominence in the CIHR agenda."

With "shared concern about the institute system" being expressed among vision researchers across the country, Strong believes a positive outcome has been "some interesting linkages spawned" through the increased communication among those in the field, particularly between optometry and ophthalmology.

An example is the development of the Vision Health Research Council, established about a year ago as a collective voice -- "devoted to the promotion of research in vision health", according to the mission statement. It serves in part as a "lobby for change to ensure vision gets appropriately placed within the CIHR agenda," says Strong, who with the UW dean of graduate studies, Jake Sivak, serves as a VHRC board member.

Pascal lecturer is announced

A world-renowned computer scientist, Donald Knuth, is this year's featured speaker at the annual public lecture series. Currently, he is a professor emeritus of "the Art of Computer Programming" at Stanford University. While at UW, Knuth will receive an honorary Doctor of Letters degree at fall convocation to be held Saturday, October 21.

His first Pascal lecture, "Randomization and Religion" will be given Wednesday, October 18, at 8 p.m. in the Humanities Theatre, and the second one follows next evening at the same time, under the title "God and Computer Science".

Knuth, who has been described as the best-known living computer scientist, established his reputation with his book The Art of Computer Programming, published in 1968. He developed the open software TeX (taken from the Greek term for art) in order to replace the ugly computer typefaces common at the time. Later, he wrote Metafont, and today 90 per cent of all science and math texts appear in TeX and Metafont. More recently, he published Literate Programming, among dozens of other books and articles on computing.

At UW, Knuth will also give two afternoon seminars open to the community: "The Art of Computer Programming: All Questions Answered" on October 18 at 3:30 p.m. and "All Other Questions Answered" on October 29 at 3:30 p.m., both at the Humanities Theatre. As well, he will give a special seminar, "The Joy of Asymtotics," for the faculty of mathematics on October 20 at 2:30 p.m.

On October 21, Knuth, who plays a Caasavant organ at his church, will join Jan Overduin to perform an Organ Duet Recital at 7:30 p.m. in the Benton Street Baptist Church.

There will also be a display of artwork that emerged from Knuth's "3:16, Biblical Texts" project. The exhibition is to open tomorrow and continue through October 29 in the UW Art Gallery, Modern Languages building.

The Pascal Lecture series was established to create a forum for Christian issues in an academic environment by inviting "outstanding individuals who have distinguished themselves in both an area of scholarly endeavour and of Christian thought or life". It is financed by donations and the royalties from published lectures.

The series is named after Blaise Pascal (1632-1662), a French academic and Christian best remembered as a forerunner of Newton in the establishment of calculus. Pascal was also the author of a Christian meditation, Les Pensées.

Clockmaker Brendan Reilly will present his largest project to UW this afternoon: an original self-winding timepiece made almost entirely of wood, some 1.8 metres in diameter and with a 4.2-metre pendulum. Reilly, a UW alumnus, designed and built the clock for the great hall of the Davis Centre, and the presentation will be held there starting at 4:00.

Today: from art to community life

People from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council will be on campus today to provide information about NSERC's postgraduate scholarship and postdoctoral fellowship programs. Graduate students, undergraduate students, faculty and staff are all invited to attend an information session at 10 a.m. in Needles Hall room 3001, says Elaine Garner of the graduate studies office.

And this afternoon, the faculty of mathematics will hold a scholarship information meeting at 3:30 in Davis Centre room 1302, with the facts about awards available from both NSERC and the Ontario Graduate Scholarship program. "Fourth-year and graduate students who are considering applying for these scholarships for graduate study are urged to attend. Refreshments available."

Welcome-back events for graduate students continue at the Grad House. Today it's Pizza Day -- "get a slice of pizza for only a buck," from 12 noon to 2 p.m. -- and then from 1:30 to 7:00 there will be "all-day live music from a variety of bands", plus an Ultimate Frisbee and Volleyball Tournament (and I hope that's two different sports, not one combined). The day winds up with "The Open Mike Show" at 10 p.m.

A news conference today will mark the official launch of UWStudent.Org. It's a web site with student news -- and with ambition for other kinds of student-related media projects as well -- and it's one of the sites I monitor regularly, as you can imagine. Its lead story as of this morning:

Wednesday at 4:00 p.m. was the second focus group/student consultation on the new co-op building. Three students showed up to give input to the architects, Janna Hickson, Simon Woodside and Ian Tien.

The session was organized to solicit student views of the requirements of the new co-op building. Concerns were raised over the summer that the building might be located on the 'grassy knoll' by the Grad House and it seems now that won't happen.

Frank Berkshire of Imperial College, London, gives another talk in the faculty of mathematics today -- that'll be his third this week. He speaks at 2:30 p.m. (Math and Computer room 2066) on "Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle and Quality Assurance of Universities", describing his experience with the recent quality assurance program carried out in British institutions. "He can still smell the cordite and the heat of battle!" an abstract notes. "Hear how it was and how it might be!"

Also at 2:30, in Math and Computer room 4040, graduate student Thomas Tran, of the department of computer science, speaks on "Hybrid Recommender Systems for Electronic Commerce".

Then at 3:30, the chemical engineering department has a seminar: Andrzej Radlinski of the Australian Geological Survey will speak on "Applications of Small Angle Scattering to Petroleum Geology", in Doug Wright Engineering building room 2517.

The Jewish Students Association will have its first meeting of the term, and election of officers, at 5:30 tonight at The Second Cup on University Avenue just east of campus.

"Interested in computer graphics?" an announcement begins. "Enjoy watching state-of-the-art animation? Looking for a cheap place to take a date?" The solution is SIGGraph Video Night, "featuring some truly awesome computer animations from Siggraph '99." The presentation starts at 7:00 in Davis Centre room 1302, and although it's sponsored by the Computer Science Club for "members only", the next line adds that "$2 memberships will be sold at the door." (CSC diehards will be there an hour early anyway, as club elections for the fall term will be held in the same place at 6:00.)

And . . . tonight brings the fifth annual Community Life Night at UW Place, which was still called "Married Student Apartments" when the first such evening was held. The population in the two towers and four low-rise "courts" is "kind of a mixture" now, says Sandy Morton in the UW Place office, and tonight's event is meant to have something for everybody, from the single students in Beck Hall (formerly the East Tower) to the small children from the apartment areas. There will be music, a magician, a "bounce house", information booths from local agencies, and lots and lots of food. "It's for the whole community," Morton repeats. Community Life Night will run from 4 to 8 p.m. at the base of Beck Hall.

CAR

Editor of the Daily Bulletin: Chris Redmond
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